Category Archives: Teaching

AI & philosophical activity in courses, part 2

Introduction

This is part 2 of my discussion of ways to possibly use AI tools to support philosophical activities in courses. In my part 1 blog post I talked about using AI to support learning about asking philosophical questions, analyzing arguments, and engaging in philosophical discussion. In this post I focus on AI and writing philosophy.

Caveats:

There are a lot of resources out there on AI and writing, and I’m purposefully focusing largely with my own thoughts at the moment, though likely many of those will have been influenced by the many things I’ve read so far. I may include a few links here and there, and use other blog posts to review and talk about some ideas from others on AI and writing that may be relevant for philosophy.

In this post I’m not going to focus on trying to generate AI-proof writing assignments, or ways to detect AI writing…I think both are very challenging and likely to change quickly over time. My focus is on whether AI may be helpful for learning in terms of writing, not so much for the purposes of this post on AI and academic integrity (though that is also very important!).

Note that by engaging in these reflections I’m not saying that use of generative AI in courses is by any means non-problematic. There are numerous concerns to take into account, some of which are noted on a newly-released set of guidelines on the use of generative AI for teaching and learning that I worked on with numerous other folks at our institution. The point here is just to focus in on whether there might be at least some ways in which AI might support students in doing philosophical work in courses; I may not necessarily adopt any of these, and even if I do there will be numerous other things to consider.

I’m also not saying that writing assignments are the only or best way to do philosophy; it’s just that writing is something that characterizes much of philosophical work. It is of course important to question whether this should be the case, and consider alternative activities that can still show philosophical thinking, and I have done that in some courses in the past. But all of this would take us down a different path than the point of this particular blog post.

Finally I want to note that these are initial thoughts from me, not settled conclusions. I may and likely will change my mind later as I learn and think more. Also, a number of sections below are pretty sketchy ideas, but that’s because this is just meant as a brainstorm.

To begin:

Before asking whether/how AI might support student learning in terms of writing philosophy, I want to interrogate for myself the purposes of why I ask students to write in my philosophy courses, particularly in first-year courses. After all, in my introductory level course, few students are going to go on and continue to write specifically for philosophy contexts; some will go on to other philosophy courses, but many will not, and even fewer will go on to grad school or to do professional philosophy.

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Early thoughts on ChatGPT & writing in philosophy courses

Yes, it’s another post on ChatGPT! Who needs another post? I do! Because one of the main reasons I blog is as a reflective space to think through ideas by writing them down, and then I have a record for later. I’m also very happy if my reflections are helpful to others in some way of course!

Like so many others, I’ve been learning a bit about and reflecting on GPT-3 and ChatGPT, and I must start off by saying I know very little so far. I took a full break from all work-related things from around December 20 until earlier this week, and I plan to do some deeper dives to learn more in the coming days and weeks. I should also say that though this is focused on GPT, that’s just because it’s the only one I’ve looked into at this point.

Mainly why I’m writing this post is to do some deeper reflection on why I have many writing assignments in my philosophy courses, what I hope they will do for students. And as I was thinking about this, I started reflecting on the role of writing in philosophy more generally, since philosophy classes teach…philosophy.

Academic philosophy and writing

Okay, a whole book could be written about the role of writing in academic philosophy. Here are just a few anecdotal reflections.

Philosophy as I have been trained in it and practice it in academia is frequently focused on writing. We also speak orally, and that’s really important to the discipline as well. Conversations in hallways, in classes, with visiting speakers, at conferences, etc. are all crucial ways we engage in thinking, discussing, making arguments as well as critiquing and improving them. This may not be agreed upon by all, but I still think writing is more heavily emphasized. Maybe I think that partly because for hiring, tenure, and promotion processes what seems to count most are written works rather than oral presentations, lectures, or workshops. Maybe it’s because most of what we do when we do research in philosophy is read written works by others and then write articles, chapters, or books ourselves.

Oral conversations tend to be places where philosophers test out ideas, brainstorm new ideas, give and receive feedback, iterate, discuss, do Q&A, and communicate (among other purposes). Interestingly, even at philosophy conferences, at least the ones in North America I’ve attended, it’s common to read written works out loud during research presentation sessions. (This is not the case for sessions focused on teaching philosophy, which are often more workshop-like and focused more on interactive activities.) For me it can be very challenging to pay attention for a long time by just listening, and I personally appreciate when there are slides or a handout to help keep one’s thinking on track and following along. Writing again! Oral conversations and presentations are also not accessible to all, of course, and one alternative (in addition to sign language) is writing, either in captions or transcripts.

Writing is also a way that some folks (maybe many?) think their way through philosophical or other arguments and ideas. As noted at the top of this post, this is certainly the case for me. I have to put things into words in order to really piece them together and form more coherent thoughts, and though that can be done orally (say, through a recording device), for me it works better in writing.

From these brief reflections, here are some of the likely many roles of writing in doing philosophy. This is not a comprehensive list by any means! And it’s likely similar for at least some other disciplines.

  • Writing to think and understand: Sometimes summarizing works by others helps one to understand them better (e.g., outlining premises and conclusions from a complicated text, or recording what one thinks are the main claims and overall conclusion of a text). In addition, sometimes writing helps one to understand better one’s own somewhat vague thoughts, to clarify, delineate, group them into categories, think of possible objections, etc. (That’s what I’m doing with this blog post)
  • Writing to communicate: communicating our own ideas and arguments, and taking in communications by others of theirs by reading them (as one means; communication of philosophical ideas and arguments can happen in other ways too!). Communicating the ideas and arguments of others, as often happens in lectures in philosophy classes, or when summarizing someone else’s argument before critiquing it and offering a revised version or something new.
  • Writing as a memory aid: Taking notes when reading texts, or listening to a speaker, or during class. Writing down notes to remind oneself what to say when teaching, or giving a lecture or conference presentation, or facilitating a workshop. Writing one’s thoughts down to be able to return to them later and review, revise, etc. (as in the last point).

The point of these musings is that at least in my experience, a lot of philosophical work, at least in academia, is done in or through writing, even though many of us also engage in non-written discussions and communications. And for me, this is important context to consider when thinking about teaching philosophy and writing, and what it may mean when tools like ChatGPT come onto the scene.

Teaching philosophy and writing

I came to the thoughts above because I was thinking about how it is very common in philosophy courses to have writing assignments–frequently the major assignments are essays in one form or another–and I started to reflect on why that might be. It could be argued that writing is pretty well baked into what it means to do (academic) philosophy, at least in the philosophical traditions I’m familiar with. So it could make sense that teaching students how to do philosophy, and having them do philosophical work in class, means teaching them to write and having them write! (Of course, academic philosophy is not all of what philosophy can be…this is another area on its own, but I think at least some of the focus on writing in philosophy courses may be related to its focus in academic philosophy.)

And like many academic and disciplinary skills, it can be helpful to build up towards philosophical writing skills by practising the kinds of steps that are needed to do it well. So, for example, in philosophy courses we often ask students to review an argument presented by someone else (usually in writing) and summarize it, perhaps by outlining the premises and conclusion. Then maybe in a later step we’ll ask them to offer questions or critiques of the argument, or alternative views or approaches, all of which are important parts of doing philosophy in the traditions in which I’m immersed. In later stages or upper-level courses we’ll ask students to do research where they gather arguments from multiple sources on a particular topic, analyze them, and offer their own original contributions to the philosophical discussion.

All of this is similar to the sort of work professional philosophers do in their own research, and to me just seems like natural ways of doing philosophy given my own experience. It’s just that we do it at different levels and often in a scaffolded way in teaching.

However, mostly I teach introductory-level courses, and the number of students who will go on to do any more philosophy, much less become professional philosophers, is relatively small. So personally, I including writing assignments not just because they are part of what it means to do philosophy (though it’s partly that), but also because I think the skills developed are useful in other contexts. Being able to take in and understand arguments by others (whether textual or otherwise), break them down into component parts to help support both understanding and evaluation, evaluate them, and revise or come up with different ideas if needed, are I think pretty basic and important skills in many, many areas of work and life. I think this (or something like it) may (?) continue to be the case as AI writing tools become more and more ubiquitous, but of course I’m not sure, and that’s a question for further thought.

Process and product

When teaching it’s much more about the learning and thinking that happens through the process of writing activities that’s important. The essay or parts of an essay that result are not the critical pieces. After all, if I ask 100 or more students to analyze the same argument and produce a set of premises and conclusions (for example), the resulting summary/analysis of the argument isn’t the important piece there, especially when there will be many, many of them. It’s the learning and thinking that’s happening to get to that point. The summary is there as a stand-in for the thinking and learning. And in some cases it’s the same for the critiques, feedback, or alternative ideas that students may offer in response to someone else’s argument–what I may care about more is what they’re learning through doing that thinking rather than the specific replies they produce. Many will be really interesting and thought-provoking. Others may be will be similar across multiple students. Depending on the level of the course and the learning outcomes, all of these may be fine as results; what I care about is that they are putting in the thought and reflection to hone skills of (to use a too-well-worn term) “critical thinking.”

When I think about it this way, I wonder what is the purpose of the actual essay or paragraph or outline of an argument that I assign in courses. It’s often not the actual end product (though sometimes it is, particularly for upper level or graduate courses). The end product is mostly a vehicle and proxy for me as a teacher to review whether the thinking, reflecting, and learning is taking place.

So, thinking about the several ways writing is used in philosophy noted in the previous section, I think largely I’m assigning writing for the purposes of thinking and understanding, and also communicating–maybe to other students, to me, to TAs, etc. And my assumption, when marking writing, is that the written text is actually communicating the student’s thinking and understanding, that the communication and the thinking are linked.

Teaching writing in philosophy, and ChatGPT

One of the things that the emergence of ChatGPT really emphasizes for me is that that end product isn’t really a good communication vehicle to assess whether the thinking and understanding has taken place. This really hit home for me through a post on Crooked Timber by philosopher Eric Schliesser. Schliesser notes that several professors have said that the essays produced by ChatGPT are decent enough to earn a passing grade, if not higher. “But this means that many students pass through our courses and pass them in virtue of generating passable paragraphs that do not reveal any understanding,” Schliesser points out.

This made me think: the essay may not only not be a reliable communication of the student’s own thinking (which we knew already due to concerns about plagiarism, people paying others to write their essays, etc.), but may not be communicating thinking and understanding at all. The link between the two can be completely severed. (This is assuming, as I think it’s safe to assume at this point, that tools like ChatGPT are not doing any thinking or understanding…I know this is a philosophical question but for the moment I’m going to go with the seemingly-reasonable-at-this-point claim that they’re not.)

In one respect, this is an extension of previous academic integrity concerns: if what we want to be assessing is the student’s own thinking and understanding, then ChatGPT and the like are similar issues in that a student could submit something that does not communicate their own understanding–it’s just that in this case, rather than communicating the understanding someone, somewhere, at some point had, it’s not communicating understanding at all.

But of course, we have academic integrity concerns for a reason, and for me it’s not just that I want to be able to tie the writing to the individual student for the sake of integrity and fairness of assessment (though that is important too), it’s also that I want to engage students in activities that will develop skills that will be useful to them in the future. And it’s seeming more and more the case that the written texts I have used in the past as a vehicle to review whether they have developed those skills is less and less useful for that purpose.

At the moment, I can think of a few options, some of which could be combined for a particular assignment or class:

  1. Continue to try to find ways to connect the writing students do out of class to themselves–an extension of academic integrity approaches we already have. These can include:
    • using plagiarism checkers (which right now I think do not work with tools like ChatGPT
    • comparing earlier, in-class writing to later, out-of-class writing
    • quizzing students orally on the content of their written work
    • asking students to do multiple steps for writing assignments, some of which could be done in class, and also ask them to explain their reasoning for the choices they are making (this one from Julia Staffel–see more from her below)
  2. Find other ways for students to show their thinking and understanding than assigning written work done outside of class.
    • E.g., Ryan Watkins from George Washington University suggests (among other things) having students create mind maps (which ChatGPT can’t do … yet?) and holding in-class debates where students could show their thinking, understanding, and skills in communicating.
    • Julia Staffel from the University of Colorado Boulder talks in a video posted on Daily Nous about alternative approaches in philosophy courses, such as in-class essays, oral exams, oral presentations (synchronous or recorded), and assignments based on non-textual sources such as podcasts or videos (but that only works until the tools can start using those as source material).
  3. Use ChatGPT or similar in writing assignments

    • Numerous people have also suggested assignments in which students need to work with ChatGPT; if we think of it like a helper tool that can generate some early ideas for us to build on or critique, or that can provide summaries of others’ work that we can evaluate for ourselves, etc., then we could still be supporting students to build some similar kinds of skills as earlier writing assignments.
    • Still, inspired by a blog post by Autumm Caines, I’m wary of doing this until I look more into privacy implications, who has access to what data and how it’s used. Autumm also talks about the ethics of requiring students to provide free labour to companies to train tools like this. And what happens when the tool or ones like it are no longer offered for free?
    • Finally since ChatGPT can already mark and provide feedback on its own writing (albeit not perhaps the best), it’s not clear to me that having students have the tool draft something and then comment on it/revise it is going to necessarily get around the tie-the-work-to-a-mind issue.

A number of the ideas above have to do with doing things synchronously, in a way that the instructor and/or TAs can witness. Some are alternative approaches to providing evidence of thinking and understanding done outside of class that work for now, just based on what the tech can do at the moment. And maybe those will continue to work for some time, or maybe not. It feels a bit like trying to do catch-up with an ever-changing landscape.

I have many more thoughts, but this blog post is already too long so I’ll save them for later. For now, a takeaway is that maybe one of the things that I’ll need to do in the future is spend more time in class on activities that develop and allow students to communicate the thinking and understanding I’m hoping to support them in. If I have to assess them (which I do), then I’d like to bring the communication and the thinking parts back together. I want to think through pros and cons of a number of suggestions noted above, and similar ones, particularly around what they are actually measuring and whether it’s connecting to my learning goals in teaching (which, incidentally, is an important exercise to do for out-of-class writing too of  course!).

I also have some ill-formed thoughts about the value of teaching students to write philosophy essays at all, if they can be written so easily by a bot that doesn’t think or understand. But that’s for another day!

 

4 phases of Intentionally Equitable Hospitality

Screenshot of the title of the workshops I'm participating in: Intentionally Equitable Hospitality Series, January 2023

From a slides from the Intentionally Equitable Hospitality Series, licensed CC BY-NC, Bali, Tammer, Maweu, Zamora, Sorenson-Unruh.

I’m participating in a series of three sessions on Intentionally Equitable Hospitality, organized and facilitated by Maha Bali, Yasser Tammer, Irene Maweu, Mia Zamora, and Clarissa Sorenson-Unruh. You can find out more about the series from a blog post by Maha Bali. IEH is something I learned about a bit while participating in Virtually Connecting, a community that has brought together people who were attending conferences in person with people who were not attending, to have informal conversations about the conference, about the topics being discussed, about each others’ work, etc.

IEH is a way to facilitate and teach that supports equity and inclusivity, that intentionally works make a space where everyone feels welcomed and can participate equitably (as an ideal to strive for; making this work for everyone can be challenging but we can always keep working towards it). IEH is particularly focused on relations of power, on oppression and marginalization, and how these play into classes, workshops, and other events.

Here’s a brief overview of IEH from Bali & Zamora (2022):

IEH begins with the notion that the teacher or workshop facilitator is a “host” of a space, responsible for hospitality, and welcoming others into that space. IEH requires intentionality about who is involved in the design of that space, noticing for whom the space is hospitable and for whom it is not. IEH is iterative design, planning, and facilitation in the moment. It also includes the interactions outside of formal gatherings that influence formal, synchronous interactions.

You can also find out more about IEH from Bali, Caines, Hogue, Dewaard, and Friedrich (2019), focused on Virtually Connecting. And Maha Bali also has a short video explaining the concept.

As someone who teaches and also facilitates workshops and other events, I am very interested in learning more about IEH and how to put it into practice in my own context.

We had the first session on January 5, and I wanted to write down a few thoughts about one thing that stood out to me (there are many others!), namely the four phases of IEH that were presented in the session.

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What I (should not) assume

Road with a sign on the side saying "Welcome to Idaho"

Welcome to Idaho, US Route 91, Franklin, Idaho, photo by Ken Lund, shared on Flickr with CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

 

This is the third blog post in the 9x9x25 challenge I’m doing (still one behind, as it’s week 4!). See this post explaining the challenge.

 

I’m part of a book club, and right now we’re reading Educated by Tara Westover. I’m most of the way through the book and hopefully won’t give too many spoilers, but as it’s a memoir and her bio can be seen at the website linked above, the general outlines of her educational journey are easily known. I’ll just add a few more details from the book here in my reflection on her experience and how it has led me to reflect on my own teaching practices.

The memoir

This book is about a young woman growing up in rural Idaho (and since I grew up in Idaho too, a number of the places mentioned are familiar to me, though I am not from the same region as her). Her family, due to religious and other beliefs, chose not to send their children to school (though some went for a time anyway if I remember correctly), and wouldn’t go to doctors if they could at all help it. Tara never went to school but managed to study on her own and get high enough marks on the ACT (one of the exams high school students can take to get into some colleges and universities) to be admitted to Brigham Young University in Utah. There, she went through deep financial and personal struggles, including facing a world where the beliefs she had grown up with were frequently challenged in ways she wasn’t always ready to deal with.

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Some end-of-term thoughts on Intro to Philosophy

statue of Socrates, showing just the head

Socrates, by Ben Crowe, licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr.com

 

 

Classes for this term ended yesterday, and I have a few immediate thoughts/reflections after the term has finished, about my Introduction to Philosophy course that I wanted to write down so I don’t forget them when I’m planning for the next time!

Here are a few things I struggled with determining how to do best this term.

Lecture & non-lecture time during class

This class meets Mondays and Wednesdays for 50 minutes in a big group, and then students also attend one more 50-minute discussion group run by a Teaching Assistant. I run the M,W classes, and it’s often a struggle for me to figure out how best to balance lecture vs. active learning time in that class.

On one hand, there is a great deal of research literature showing that students learn better if they don’t only listen to lectures but also do something with what they’re learning. On the other hand, I do think lectures can be quite useful if done well (and I try my best!); plus, students need to have some kind of basic understanding before active learning on the material can be effective. This can be gotten through what they do outside of class, but just reading philosophy texts on one’s own, if one is new to philosophy, isn’t usually the best way to get that understanding. I have created a few videos to help students with some of the readings but these are time consuming to make and I haven’t made very many.

In addition, since students also attend a full discussion group meeting once a week, I feel like I don’t want to do too much in the way of activities in the M,W class because I need to leave some of that available for the other class.

I did a midterm survey to get feedback partway through the course, and most students seemed to think the balance of what we were doing in class was fine; some wanted a little more lecture, some wanted a little less, and there wasn’t a strong majority on one side or the other.

Still, I feel like I want to work on this more, partly because of the next thing.

What to include in lectures

One student on the midterm feedback survey made an important point: they said that they felt like the people who did the readings before class (which I ask students to do!) got punished, in a way, because the lectures often went back over the readings. I agree! I struggle with this too.

The issue with intro to philosophy courses is that philosophy texts are not always easy to read and understand, for those new to the field (and also sometimes even for those familiar with the field!). As a result, all of my experience as a student, a grad student TA, and visiting others’ philosophy courses at times, shows that we tend to ask students to do the reading before class and then we go back over the reading in class to clarify the arguments. It is of course critical for all of us to have the basics of the arguments before writing essays about the philosophical views.

But I think I can work on this further by having more guidance for students while they’re reading or just before class. So, videos to help break down the basics, or formative (non-graded) quizzes to help them get the basics before coming to class, e.g. This is not something that can be done quickly but I can build it up over time.

I also want to take more time in class to talk about how to take notes on philosophical texts, and find ways to encourage more note-taking while reading. One way would be to ask them to submit notes from time to time that are graded just for completion. I made that an optional way to earn participation marks this term and those who did it did a great job! The only thing that has kept me from making this required is the large number of students in this course (usually between 100 & 150), and the difficulty of keeping up with marking. But I’m going to give this some more serious thought.

Then we could do other things in class, like delve more deeply into potential criticisms of the arguments–if they have the basics first then we can go deeper in class.

Peer feedback on essays

Last year I asked students to submit their completed first essays for peer feedback: after they submitted their first essays, they shared with one other person who read the whole essay and gave feedback for the purpose of improving the writing for the second essay. On the student evaluations some students wanted to be able to use peer feedback before they submit the essay for a mark.

So I changed things this year and had students submit something for peer feedback before each essay. For the first essay they submitted a draft introduction paragraph with a thesis statement, plus topic sentences for each body paragraph. That was due a bit over a week before the essay, and then students got comments from two other students (ideally) before finalizing their essays. For the second essay we did something similar, though this time they could submit up to 350 words of a paragraph about one of the philosophers’ views, if they wanted, or the same kind of thing they submitted for the first essay. The purpose of the paragraph option was to get feedback on whether they got the philosophers’ views correct and on the balance between quotes and paraphrases in the paragraph.

We did the peer feedback online (on Canvas), and it worked mostly okay. The main concerns I had were that some people submitted work but didn’t give any feedback on others’ work. The system automatically assigns two other students’ work for each student who submitted something. So for the surprisingly significant number of people who didn’t do any peer feedback, those other students missed out on comments (the TAs and I offered to talk to students who didn’t get any feedback from any other students, to discuss their work–which is of course something any student could also do!).

I’m struggling with:

  • How valuable it is to get feedback on small snippets before submitting a full essay, as we did this year, or whether I should go back to having students provide feedback on a completed essay
    • If the latter, probably the option to rewrite the essay should be made available.
  • How to get students to actually do peer feedback online (make it worth more, perhaps)
    • Last year we did peer feedback in person–students could only participate if they came to class and exchanged their essay with someone else. This meant that students actually did it, but it also meant it couldn’t be anonymous. There are pros and cons for each!

 

Those are my initial thoughts here at the end of the term. I will do more reflecting after the student evaluations of teaching results are out!

“No devices” policies and accessibilty

 

The times they are a’changing, by Brett Jordan, licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr

 

I have had a couple of conversations here and there with faculty and graduate students about students using electronic devices in the classroom, and about policies that some instructors have saying that students aren’t allowed to use them at all (or that there are periods during a class where they must be put away, but other times when they can be used). I knew that sometimes students really need devices to succeed, particularly if they have certain kinds of disabilities; but I sometimes struggled to give good examples of when that might be the case, to help others see why electronic devices are critical for some students. In this post I’ll be giving a number of examples.

Can’t students just be excepted from the policy if they have academic accommodations?

Most instructors who won’t allow electronic devices in their classes make exceptions for students with documented disabilities that require device use for them to learn well (in most places such accommodations are required, I think). But there are still some concerns with this having the policy plus exemptions:

  • Students with those needs now have to stand out in a class in ways they wouldn’t otherwise, and in ways that could make them feel like they are divulging something they would rather not (and shouldn’t have to) divulge to others. They now stand out as the only one in the class (or, if they’re lucky, one of two) who gets to use a device while other students wonder just why they get to use one. I have seen a couple of students on social media say that as soon as they see a “no devices” policy on a syllabus they drop the class because of this concern.
  • Sometimes students’ needs may not quite get to the level required for official accommodations, but using devices makes it so that they can learn at the same level as those without those needs.
  • Getting the documentation required for accommodation can be costly, depending on where you live and whether the health care system covers that sort of thing. Some students may not be able to afford this cost. Tests needed can run into the hundreds of dollars or more. And sometimes they have to be redone every few years.

Now, I do see the need for requiring documentation for accommodations; I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that. It is important that all students who have demonstrated needs are treated impartially, and so there are rules applied to all that say what needs to be done for accommodations. But the question is: is it so important to stop device use that it means some students won’t be able to succeed as well in the course because of the second or third bullet point, above?

Some examples of when devices are critical to learning

To help make the case to others, I wanted better examples than I had already for why some students really rely on electronic devices to learn. So I asked on social media, and I got a long list! I’m going to paraphrase them here; some people divulged their own struggles, and even though they did so on a public social media site, I didn’t ask if I could embed those posts in this new medium of a blog post. So I’m just paraphrasing what people told me. And I’ve made a rough separation of them into categories.

 Motor control or other issues with hands

  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Arthritis
  • Chronic pain in hands
  • Dystonia
  • Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
  • Eczema can sometimes be bad enough that bending fingers as much as is needed for writing is difficult because broken skin
  • There can be difficulties with fine motor control in: ADHD, Autism (including Asperberger’s), Tourettes

Visual and auditory reasons

  • If slides are posted ahead of a class meeting, students with visual difficulties can follow along on their computers with adaptive tech that allows for magnification, font changes, or other changes to make the slides easier for them to see. (One person who posted this said that posting slides ahead of time can help all students, since they can go stay on a slide while they’re making notes about it even if the instructor moves forward, or they can go back to review something while the lecture is happening to better understand what is being discussed at that moment).
  • Students with visual difficulties may be able to touch type but have a harder time with handwriting; those with lowvision can can type on a computer and then either:
    • enlarge the font, change the font to one that is easier to read, or
    • print on a braille printer for later reading, or
    • use text-to-speech software to listen to the notes later.
  • Students with auditory issues (including low hearing, deafness, or Auditory Processing Disorder) may use software to have spoken words translated into written words in real time on their devices.

Cognitive and emotional reasons

  • Some students may have difficulty with eye contact (sometimes anxiety or autism can manifest this way), and need somewhere else to look.
  • Dyslexia and dysgraphia: students can look up words or use spell check to get them right in their notes
  • Problems with executive function can mean organizing many physical papers is difficult but having a single device with files organized into folders is easier

Language learners

  • Students who are still working on expertise in the language of instruction: they can look up words they don’t understand (Google is pretty good at fixing spelling if you have just heard the word but don’t know how to spell it).
  • Such students could also use devices to record lectures (with permission), since it can be hard to pay attention and process for long periods in a language you are not already expert in.

 

This is still not a comprehensive list, and as one person said on Twitter, there never can be one, since technology and adaptive tools are continually changing, and people may be using tech to support their learning in ways that no one ever thought of or even realizes.

 

Sitting in a certain part of the room

Many times, instructors justify “no devices” policies or “lids down” time in class in order to encourage students to avoid distracting themselves, and in particular, distracting others. The latter can be accomplished by asking students with devices to sit in a particular part of the room, and those who don’t want to be possibly distracted by others to sit elsewhere. I sometimes hear people saying that, given the physical makeup of laptops, they ask students with devices to sit in the back of the room.

This works from the perspective of those not wanting distractions to not have to sit behind those students with laptops who may be doing things on them unrelated to the class, but there’s a worry from the point of accessibility: sometimes those students who use laptops because they need them also have vision issues, and sitting in the back is going to make the situation worse for them (e.g., if the professor writes on the board; they may have the slides in advance and can look at those magnified on their screens at least).

So perhaps a better way of approaching the issue is to ask students with devices to sit on the sides of the room, whether in front or back? This is a genuine question…I am not sure this might not raise other problems, but at the moment it seems a possible compromise. I would want to make sure there is enough space on the sides of the room for all the students who want to use devices.

 

Your examples

Do you know of other examples of when/why students might need to use electronic devices in classes in order to succeed academically? Please put them in the comments below!

 

Use of class time in PHIL 102

I’m teaching PHIL 102, Introduction to Philosophy, Jan-April 2018. I have taught this course many times before (and have blogged about it; see here for posts about the course), and I keep revisiting it and renewing it because I’m never fully satisfied. This year I’m focusing my changes in large part on the question of how best to use class time. See the previous post for some general reflections on that.

Below are some problems I am seeing in PHIL 102 that lead me to wonder about my use of class time and whether I should change it.

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How best to use class time? (11 years later)

photo of a classroom with empty desks and chairs

Classroom by Victor Björkund, licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr.

Eleven years ago, during the summer I first started this blog (2006), I wrote a couple of posts about the use of class time: What is class time for? Part 1 and Part 2.

I don’t know whether the fact that I’m still dealing with a version of the same question this many years later means I’m just failing or that it’s a hard problem. I believe the latter, though!

In those posts I wondered what is the best use of the limited time that we have to have students together in a room (if we teach face-to-face courses, that is). What I was used to from my own courses, and what I did when I first started teaching, was to use that time to: (1) do a lecture in which I explain the assigned readings, clarifying complicated points, heading off potential misunderstandings, and then also either offering a critique or inviting students to offer critiques; and also (2) often I would find ways to engage students in a discussion of some philosophical question. This latter would be either the whole class together (depending on the size of the class), or small groups.

Even in 2006, my third year at UBC (my sixth year of teaching after the PhD), I was wondering about (1). Not that I think that is a bad thing to do, but I was wondering how much time I should spend on that, because:

  • Why should students spend time reading (let’s face it, often difficult) texts when they can come to class and get it explained by the prof?
  • My conception of philosophy, especially for students who may take one or two philosophy classes but won’t be majors, is that it could go beyond reading writings by others and discussing them. I think philosophy is valuable and useful beyond the academy, and doing courses in which all students do is read what others have said and critique it can give a narrow view of what philosophy and philosophical activity are and could be. That’s what professional philosophers do, but most students in my 100 level courses won’t become professional philosophers.
  • Does it really help students learn how to understand and critique complicated arguments if the instructor usually does it for them? Some modeling is necessary, of course, but more practice than I used to give (and frankly, more than I currently give) could be pedagogically useful.

Revisiting the question

Now, here I am in 2017, still addressing a variant of the same question: what is the best use of that limited face-to-face time? What do we need to be in the same room together to do, and what can be done without being in the same room together? (The success of many online courses says there may be a great deal that can be done separately, asynchronously, online).

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Grading rubrics in philosophy

This is a quick post designed to collect links to grading rubrics in philosophy, for the sake of putting them together in one place for graduate student TAs in our department to refer to if they want to see some examples.

Here is a recent version of a grading rubric for essays that I use in my courses, including Introduction to Philosophy and an interdisciplinary course called Arts One. I’m including a PDF version and also an MS Word version in case anyone wants to use and edit it (Word is often easier to edit). It is licensed CC BY, which means you can use it and change it if state that it’s adapted from mine as the original source.

Hendricks Philosophy Paper Rubric (PDF)

Hendricks Philosophy Paper Rubric (MS Word)

 

Daily Nous had a post in May 2017 with what they called “An impressively detailed philosophy paper grading rubric,” by Micah T. Lewin.

 

 

Mara Harrell of Carnegie Mellon has created this rubric (MS Word) for marking philosophy essays, which is even more detailed than the one above.

 

This paper marking rubric by Melissa Jacquart includes point values for each cell, which is also an option. Giving points for each part of the rubric can make marking quicker, though it also be somewhat problematic because it’s hard to include every aspect of what makes a good paper in a rubric, and sometimes it’s how things work together that leads to a better essay even if some parts are not as strong as one might like.

 

The Teach Philosophy 101 website has a list of rubrics (including some of the above) that has some not only for grading essays, but also for other kinds of assignments.

 

I’d be happy to hear about other rubrics not on this list!

 

 

What needs improvement in Intro to Philosophy

bust of Socrates with the words "PHIL 102: Introduction to Philosophy with Christina Hendricks, University of British Columbia-Vancouver" off to the right of it

Image from front page of my PHIL 102 course site from Spring 2017. Image of Socrates is Bust of Socrates from the Louvre, by CherryX, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons.

 

I am working on my Introduction to Philosophy course (PHIL 102) again; I’m teaching it next starting in January 2018. But I’ve just been appointed as the Deputy Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC (starting July 1, 2017) and so I’m trying to get as much planning done on this course before the Fall as I can).

I have taught this course many times already and every year I am not fully happy with it and try to make it better. This year was no exception (I taught it from Jan-April 2017). Some of my previous blog posts about this course are here. The post I did in Summer of 2016 on this course I thought was pretty good on overall learning goal planning and reflection, so I’m going to reuse those ideas.

But this post here will be a bit different; I’m going to approach it from the perspective of what I thought didn’t work so well, and see if I can’t come up with new ideas from there.

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